A response piece refers to a pre-addressed delivery item, such as a postcard, letter, or envelope, provided by a sender to third parties, such as customers. Typically, a response piece by a sender, such as a mailer, is provided to elicit and, in some instances, expedite responses from third parties and to provide more accurate delivery. For example, a magazine publisher may provide a response piece to its subscribers to elicit and expedite responses from its subscribers. Such responses may include a customer name and address information, subscription information, and/or payment information.
There are two types of response pieces: a prepaid response piece and an unpaid response piece. A prepaid response piece refers to a response piece that requires the mailer (e.g., magazine publisher) to pay the postage when it is returned. Examples of prepaid response pieces include Business Reply Mail™ (BRM) and Qualified Business Reply Mail™ (QBRM) provided by the United States Postal Service™ (USPS™). An unpaid response piece refers to a response piece that requires the sender (e.g., magazine publisher) to pay the postage before mailing. An example of an unpaid response piece is Courtesy Reply Mail™ (CRM) from the USPS™.
When a response piece is returned by a third party, it is advantageous to determine relevant information from the response piece. For example, the sender is charged a delivery fee for prepaid response pieces, based on the number of prepaid response pieces that are returned. A delivery service processing facility, such as a postal processing facility within the USPS™, determines the number of returned response pieces using a variety of cumbersome methods including manually counting the returned response pieces, weight-averaging the returned response pieces, and generating reports at the end of a processing run. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a response piece information retrieval system to automatically determine the number of returned response pieces.
In addition, a sender will often send out a response piece to solicit information. For example, a magazine can send out response pieces to solicit subscription information from its subscribers. Upon receiving the returned response piece, the sender must then process the information provided by the third party. It is desirable to provide a response piece information retrieval system to automatically process information from the response piece.